Mr. Nevins had heard that Guccifer 2.0 had hacked into the DNC. He reached out to the hacker and said: “Feel free to send any Florida-based information.”

The hacker ended up sending him 2.5 gigabytes of plundered data, some of which Mr. Nevins posted under a pseudonym on a blog called HelloFLA.com. In the data stash, were voter-turn out analyses created by the DNC. The analyses covered states like Florida, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Virginia; States that would be crucial to President Trump’s surprise November victory.

Following Mr. Nevin’s blog post, Guccifer 2.0 sent a link of the political operative’s blog to Trump political confidante Roger Stone.

Mr. Nevins confirmed to the Wall Street Journal that he had communicated with Guccifer 2.0. “I just threw an arrow in the dark.”

Mr. Nevins continued to use the stolen data, even instructing Guccifer 2.0 how to get more press by releasing fresher documents and explaining American political culture to him.

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Guccifer 2.0 is allegedly the name of a Russian intelligence unit made up of hackers or a singular person. Roger Stone has denied any involvement with Guccifer 2.0, but online records show otherwise.

In a report by the Director of the National Intelligence of the United States, U.S. security agencies cited Guccifer 2.0 as a member of Russia’s GRU.